Cirrus Logic’s improbable journey — from a fabless startup in Utah to near-collapse in the PC era, then a laser-focused reinvention as the audio brain inside Apple’s most iconic products — is equal parts engineering triumph and strategic gamble: a tiny technical win (removing two capacitors) helped pry open Apple’s door, and fifteen years of co‑design turned Cirrus into an indispensable partner that in 2025 still generated roughly 89% of its revenue from Cupertino. The payoff has been rich margins, strong cash on the balance sheet, and steady product expansion into amplifiers, power ICs, camera controllers, and laptop audio, yet the company remains haunted by the Imagination Technologies precedent and the perennial question of whether Apple could (or would) bring audio in‑house. This is a story about the upside of deep specialization, the downside of customer concentration, and the hard strategic choices that founders and investors must live with ...

--

Subscribe to our newsletter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7408775804387491842

Follow us on X @emportop

--

Transcript - https://empor.top/us/CRUS

• I. Introduction & Episode Roadmap
• I. Introduction & Episode Roadmap
• II. The Semiconductor Industry Context & Founding
• III. The PC Audio Era: Rise and Near-Death
• IV. The Wilderness Years: Searching for Identity
• V. The Apple Inflection Point: The Bet That Changed Everything
• VI. The Golden Years: Peak Apple Dependency
• VII. The Reality Check: Navigating Platform Transitions
• VIII. The Next Act: Beyond Smartphones
• IX. The Business Model Deep Dive
• X. Strategic Analysis: Porter's 5 Forces
• XI. Strategic Analysis: Hamilton's 7 Powers
• XII. Bull vs. Bear Case
• XIII. Lessons for Founders & Investors
• XIV. Epilogue & Future Outlook